Never overlook the unemployed! First, figure out the reason(s) for unemployment. The current economic climate generates many situations where people may be temporarily without a job, some even by choice. If other recruiters focus on those with a job first, that means you'll have first dibs on unemployed candidates.

Of course employers will prefer to hire the currently employed over the unemployed.

Employers will also prefer "attractive" people (e.g tall, thin, good facial features, healthy appearance and age cohort matching the managers).

No amount of wishful thinking by job-seekers will ever change this.

What does change this is simply the employer experience of never being able to find "good candidates" and tacitly reducing their biases.

"Job Performance" is not an intrinsic property of an employee. It is the result of a complex interaction of business needs and employee talents and skills.

Employers frequently discover that the "superstars" in one organization become merely average performers - or worse - when they are hired into another organization.

It is also commonplace for employers to hire a competent-looking candidate who turns out to be that "superstar" they like to brag about.

In both cases, nothing is really different with the employee. It is the matching of person with environment that makes the difference in outcome.

Heros are made - not born.

Experience, references, cultural fit, temperament—regardless of age. The person who can hit the ground running and maintain calm in a challenging and fast-paced environment. Currently employed or not, give them the opportunity to shine. My last hire was 20 years older than me but had the experience the younger folks didn't have. Fit and competence over age and beauty.

What utter nonsense.

Half the IT workforce is contract, and of that maybe 30 percent is out of work at any given moment, especially in this economy.

Do you know who is most employed? Those who will take the lowest salaries. And do you know why they will take the lowest salaries?

My question, why is there such a screaming lack of even the most basic managerial talent these days in IT?

You hire the best. Period. The best will pay for themselves. It doesn't matter if they are currently employed or not.

You can outsource the tasks that require only commodity skills, the tasks that can be performed by a scalable workforce; the people who, if given simple instructions, can perform the grunt work.

But where you need expertise, you hire the best, pay them well, and position them as subject matter experts who understand your business in a layer of detail that most don't need to grasp.

I know many an innovator who is unemployed because laggard management doesn't consider him part of the "team."

The question for the innovator is always, am I worried more about keeping my job, or doing it? For the laggard, keeping his job is paramount.

Hire the unemployed innovator who has kept up with his education and certifications.

I totally agree with the last comment. An unemployed individual is more capable of doing a good job because of he/she is eager to work. So, never under estimate the unemployed.

I agree with the poster above, as somebody who was overlooked in the job market for five years. During that time I learned a technology that is now massively in demand, but it took a brave start-up company to give me the benefit of the doubt in the first place. Don't look simply at the work record--look at their online portfolio.

There are many reasons a person can become unemployed or underemployed and looking for full- or part-time work. One good example of this is part-time technical or college-level instructors. We teach the latest technology to your employees and with the recession and the cutbacks in schools, part-timers are the first to go. Due to this many of us are out of work or underemployed.

Yet, when a teacher applies for a full- or part-time job we are basically told that we can't do the work because we are teachers (who you send your employee to for training) and "teachers teach but can't do." Some of your best potential full- or part-time employees who know the technology, have experience troubleshooting it, and can think fast on their feet, may be available.